It wasn’t enough that they had stopped Abdullah the Bomber before he could set off a dirty bomb in Times Square.
Now they were faced with a real atomic weapon.
“Does it give more details?” he asked.
Nancy shook her head. “They talk about striking down America. Establishing a Muslim Caliphate. The same spiel.”
Mark Kelly cleared his throat. “What do we know about Sadir?”
“Immigrated from Saudi Arabia in his twenties,” Karen said. “His family is well-off, they have friends in the royal family. Spends most of his time at his mosque. There’s nothing to indicate that he’s involved with terror.”
“Well, now there is,” Nancy said. “We need surveillance on him.”
Eric nodded. “I agree. Sergeant Clark, where’s Deion?”
“Still on vacation.”
“Contact him. We’ll pick him up in Chicago on our way to Nashville.” He noticed the look on Nancy’s face. “What? We’ll be going that way. I have to brief the President.”
Mark smiled and spoke before anyone else could. “You miss this. Tell me you don’t miss this.”
“There’s no need,” Nancy said. She nodded at Taylor, Mark, and John. “They can pick Deion up.”
He glanced from Nancy to the rest of his team. “I’ll just supervise.”
Even John rolled his eyes. “Good luck with that,” John muttered under his breath.
Nancy shrugged her shoulders. “You’re in charge,” she said, her voice tinged with disapproval.
Huang Lei stared at the azure blue ocean through the full-length window of his penthouse apartment. He could almost convince himself the sea was a gentle and unwavering sheet stretching beyond the horizon, but he knew better. The Pacific appeared calm on the surface, but its deep currents could be treacherous.
Those currents swirled below the surface, driving the weather patterns, and the ocean stretched for thousands of miles with only small islands to offer refuge. A man could get lost out there, never to be found. The ocean would destroy all evidence of him.
It was vast and uncaring.
There was a barely audible ding from his computer. His laptop rested on a magnificent desk of antique koa harvested from a plantation on the island and crafted by the finest woodworkers. The laptop contained its own ocean of data, as vast as the Pacific that stretched to the horizon. He spent much of his life developing tools to move that trove of data around the world, accumulating his fortune.
His wealth stripped away civility and rules of law, allowing him to acquire enormous amounts of information, and as his father had always reminded him, information was power. He sighed and pressed a button.
The man who answered was an old friend, one of his first employees, and his most trusted adviser. “Mr. Huang,” the man said, bowing his head deferentially.
“Yes, Liu Kong.”
“There has been a complication. I’m uploading the data.”
“Very good.” He opened the folder and viewed the contents. Things were moving in the ocean of data, eddies, and currents whose origins were still hidden. He had ideas — guesses, really — about those forces, but if his plan was to succeed, confrontation was required. “Make the necessary arrangements.”
“Yes, Mr. Huang,” the man said, disappearing as the video call ended.
He sat back in his chair and turned his attention back to the ocean, his mind carefully pondering what he had read. As much as he loved his penthouse apartment and office in Hawaii, he would trade them in a moment for his plan to bear fruit, for his father to finally be avenged.
Deion tapped his fingers on the kitchen table of his father’s condo, watching the old man prepare sandwiches. Even after all he had seen in the CIA, he still felt like a little kid in his father’s presence. The old man was big and broad shouldered, thick arms still muscular from years of tossing airline baggage.
Deion’s father glanced down the hall. “What’s she doing in there?”
“Making herself presentable, I suspect,” Deion answered. An old painting of flowers hanging on the far wall and a rickety wooded wine rack on top of the refrigerator were all that remained of his mom. When his father moved in, the condo was a wreck. But, over the years, the dents and dings in the wall were repaired, the light fixtures replaced, and new coats of paint freshened it up. The condo had a lively sense, a little of his father’s personality.
It was a far cry from the cramped apartment of his childhood.
“You know your brothers are gonna have words for you,” his father said, slicing tomatoes on a cutting board.
“I know,” he said. “It’s why I didn’t want to introduce her.”
Valerie emerged from the bathroom. He knew she was uneasy, unwilling to say or do anything to blow the opportunity to meet his family. “Thanks, Mr. Freeman.”
“Call me Oliver, honey,” his father said. “You’re practically part of the family.”
Deion almost spit out his coffee. “Pushing it, aren’t you?”
The old man gave them a devilish grin, the whites of his teeth contrasting against his deep ebony skin. “Got to push you a little,” he said with a wink. “Sometimes you don’t see what’s right in front of you.”
The doorbell rang and Deion’s father stepped through the living room to open the front door.
His youngest brother, Kelvin, stood with his wife, Tonya. They were dressed casually, but Deion did a mental tally on the cost of their clothes and came up with a figure that indicated his brother still hadn’t gained control of his wife’s spending. They stepped inside and Deion noticed the way that Tonya entered first, Kelvin following behind. Time hadn’t changed a thing. Tonya was still clearly in charge.
Kelvin spied him. “The prodigal son returns.”
Deion was glad to see Kelvin, but Tonya was another matter. He just didn’t like her. “How was the drive?”
“The usual,” Kelvin said. “A hassle driving all the way down here just to see your sorry ass.”
“This your girl?” Tonya asked, pointing one of her carefully lacquered fingernails.
Deion introduced them. He caught Tonya’s quick glance, scanning Valerie’s face, her clothes, how she presented herself. “Nice to meet you,” Tonya said.
Valerie gave Tonya her best smile. “Likewise. I’ve heard so much about you.”
Tonya’s eyes grew wide. “Really? Because we haven’t heard shit about you. Isn’t that right, Kelvin?”
Kelvin nodded absently. “Yeah, Deion, we haven’t heard shit.”
“How did you two meet?” Tonya asked.
“Through a friend in Washington,” Valerie said.
“Through his company?”
Valerie nodded. “Yes. I work for the State Department. He came asking for some help with import fees.”
“You’re in the government?” Tonya asked.
“Just a little cog in a giant machine,” Valerie said. “What do you do?”
“I’m a paralegal.”
The doorbell rang again, interrupting Tonya’s inspection.
Deion’s father opened the door and Darrell, Deion’s middle brother, sauntered in wearing a red tracksuit, head shaved, and a thick gold chain around his neck.
Deion bit back a laugh. Darrell always wanted to be a rapper, even when they were kids dancing around to Grandmaster Flash, but the irony was that he was anything but.
Darrell graduated from the UIC with flying colors before passing the bar, and handled probate law at Tonya’s firm.